Indian Antiquary Vol 58

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 152

142
THE INDIAX ANTIQI'ANY
Trost, 1929
latter, may be mentioned the local legend which places the capital of the legendary king Bàņa near Balasore and the legends connected with the Arrow which are common all over the north of Balasore and west of Midnapore." Proceedings, Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1883, pp. 142-3.
Batta.--' Batta,' mantimento, and Batta,' agio, are quite distinct words, and Sir Henry Elliot was undoubtedly mistaken in not perceiving the difference between the two phonetically si milar corruptions. Batla, mantimento, is the Gujarati and Mahratti bhatha, which is connected with bhát, paddy; batta, agio, is the Gujarati vatão which is derived from the Sans. Vritta. The delusive resemblance between the two perversions is merely due to the tendency to pronounce the Sanscrit bha as a b (e.g., Bharuch, Broach, Bhoi, Boy) and to change the
Va' also into a b. (e.g., Vadodra, Baroda, Vasli, Bassai, and Bassein). Bhátha, or bhattha is a noun and there is no corresponding verbal form. But besides vatav, agio, all the Gujaratî dictionaries give vatavuun, to change, as a currency note or cheque, into cash, or a rupee into the small coins representing its fractional parts.
Beri Beri.There is a very carly example of the epidemic outbreak of a disease like Barbiers or Beri Beri in Abul Fazl. In his account of the Siege of Bhakkar in A.H. 982=A.c. 1574, he writes: "By the good fortune of the Shahinshah (Akbar), a famine broke out in the fort, and Sultan Mahmûd from excess of caution, or from meanness and avarice, distributed to his men [i.e., the garrison) grain that had been stored up for twenty or thirty years, though he had abundance of new supplies. The result was that there was a great deal of disease and swellings. God's anger sent a pestilence." (Akbarndma, trans. H. Beveridge, III, 128).
The grain referred to was most probably rice. Modern research has traced the disease to 'a microscopic spore developed in that cereal.
Betel.-- The following reference to the betel leaf is older than the earliest cited in HobsonJobson (Marco Polo).
[c. 1030.] "For their [the Hindus'] country is hot, the inner parts of the bodies are cold, the natural wormth becomes weak in them, and the power of digestion is so weak that they must strengthen it by eating the leaves of the betel after dinner and by chewing the betelnut." Alberuni's India, Tr. Sachau, II, 152.
There is a curious and highly exaggerated account of the aphrodisiac virtues of the leaf in Ibn Batâta who declares that he had himself experienced them. Mas'ûdi also (c. 941] speaks of it as giving an agreeable odour to the mouth, arresting the pernicioua cola humours, stimulating the appetite and possessing la virtue d'un aphrodisiaque." Prairies D'Or, Trang. Barbier de Meynard, II, 84.
Barni and Shams-i-Siraj never use the word pân, which appears to have come into use among Muhammadan writers only in the 16th century. They uniformly speak of tambil or barg which last is a literal rendering of the Hindi word, meaning leaf. The Betel-tax also is mentioned as early as the 14th century, and spoken of as Mandavi berk '[recte' barg'] in the Fatuhat-;-Firuzshahi, Trans. Elliot and Dowson, III, 377.
Bheel. There is a much earlier reference to these people in Abul Fail.
fc. 1600.1 "It was the end of the day when one of the savage denizens of these wilds [Sipri in Malwa), who are in their language called Bhils, came to the camp and gave an indication of where the herd (of wild elephants) was." Akbarnáma, Tr. H. Beveridge, II, 354.
Bheesty. As the authors declare that they have not been able to trace the history of this term, the following folk-etymology may not be without interest. "When Babur came to India he found the heat of the climate so unendurable, that he said that the only enviable people were the water-carriers and that they ought to be called bihishti, paradisiacal." W. H. Lowe, Tr. of Badaoni's Muntakhabu 'l-tawarilch, II. 242n.
Bowly.-Yule's earliest quotation is from Ibn Batůta (c. 1343). The following description from Alberûni is of much older date.
[c. 1030.) “In every place to which some particular holiness is ascribed, the Hindus construct ponds intended for the ablutions.... They build them of great stories of an